Scientific Method —

Feeling superior about your political beliefs is a bipartisan issue

But only conservatives are dogmatic about it.

Currently, issues of extremism and intransigence aren't just of academic interest—they're headline news every day. If anything, that strengthens the case for understanding those two issues, which makes a study released by Psychological Science very timely. A team of Duke University researchers has looked at the degree to which people feel their beliefs are superior and the degree to which they are dogmatic about their beliefs. The study found differences across the ideological spectrum, but it discovered that those with extreme beliefs share some things in common.

You might think that the sense that your beliefs are superior and a bit of dogmatism would go hand-in-hand, but the authors of the new study would be happy to point out where you'd be wrong. "Dogmatic statements tend to reflect the centrality of rigidity—the belief that one’s views could not (and should not) change from what they are currently," they note in their introduction.

In contrast, issues like certainty of beliefs and the sense that they're the only correct choice are more subtle things. For example, someone could take a look at the evidence available on a topic like climate science and decide that the same conclusion reached by almost every scientist who works in the field is correct. They could be very certain that their conclusion is correct and that it is superior—it's the only reasonable conclusion anyone could reach. But they wouldn't necessarily be dogmatic about it; they could also believe that their views should change if some new evidence was uncovered. They could also feel that their conclusion is superior because it is well researched but not feel confident in it because the research involved a lot of technical details.

In general, inflexibility about beliefs has been associated with conservative political thought. The political root of conservatism is a mistrust of change, and a variety of research has suggested that this political stance has deep-seated personality correlates. The authors cite research indicating that conservatives tend to score higher on personality tests that probe "dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, and closed-mindedness," while liberals tend to score well on tests that measure openness to new ideas.

To get at whether this was associated with a sense of superiority about these beliefs, the authors designed a series of questions that carefully separated them from dogmatism. They recruited over 500 US citizens through Amazon's Mechanical Turk and asked them about their position on some hot-button political issues like health care, immigration, abortion, taxes, and voter ID laws. Then, separately, they had them rate whether their beliefs on these issues were more (or less) correct than those of other people. Finally, the participants took a standard test of dogmatism, which had them rate statements like “Anyone who is honestly and truly seeking the truth will end up believing what I believe.”

As previous work had indicated, those who tended toward conservative political views tended toward dogmatism as well.

But things were different when people were asked to rate the superiority of their beliefs. If the superiority was graphed relative to the belief's position on the political spectrum, it produced a U-shaped curve. This indicated that those with the more extreme positions, whether liberal or conservative, tended to be more certain that their beliefs were better than everyone else's.

The other thing that was clear is that not all issues tend to produce a sense of superiority, and the smugness was not symmetrical. For example, while the role of government in health care is currently leading to a lot of extreme language, very few people anywhere on the political spectrum feel that their opinions are clearly superior to everyone else's; the same goes for voter ID laws. In contrast, liberals generally felt strongly that their beliefs on laws based on religion were superior, while conservatives weren't particularly bothered. For conservatives, the equivalent issue was voter ID laws. Two topics produced strong opinions on both extremes. One was the use of torture, although liberals favored their opinion much more strongly than conservatives. The converse was true for affirmative action.

When all matters were summed up, however, a clear trend was true: as the title of the paper puts it, feeling superior is a bipartisan issue. "Respondents who insisted that they had the only possible correct view were split evenly in terms of whether they endorsed conservative or liberal viewpoints," the authors conclude. And this held true despite a relative lack of dogmatism among the liberals.

The authors say that this sort of effect is likely to extend well beyond politics. Someone may be very confident about their political views, for example, but feel very uncertain about things like religion and sports. It also may be a cultural issue here in the US. Other cultures value personal modesty a great deal, which could limit the degree to which people in some countries feel that their beliefs are superior.

The one thing not noted in this study is that the results are the outcome of averaging hundreds of individual views. The actual business of politics is often driven by a limited number of outsized personalities, and those personalities may not be accurately captured by the average.

458 Reader Comments

Considering the shift on the right from neo-con to libertarian(A very good change in my opinion), I tend to think that the conservatives have been changing more lately than the democrat side. I'm not saying that they can't be dogmatic with some things, but clearly this study doesn't tell the whole story. http://bastiat.mises.org/2012/11/from-n ... -his-life/ Tom woods is a great example of this, per the link where he speaks about it. And if you poll young voters, we have WAY more libertarians among the young than we used to.

The conservatives haven't really changed much in the last 30 years. The Republican party has changed because its bleeding its moderates out to being independent. Also I think young people have always been more libertarian there just wasn't a good word for it till recently. Then those young people grow up and realize a quasi-anarchy isn't the right way to run society. Almost everyone that I knew that was libertarian in their early 20s is no longer libertarian now in their late 30s.

Liberals tend to shift opinions when new evidence warrants a reexamination of their belief structure.

Perhaps one could say that the liberal idea of being "open to change" or "willing to listen to others" is actually dogmatic. It's not an absence of dogma; it's a meta-dogma.

Another thing about conservatives is that they are so full of nonsense you can smell it in their breath even when they post on the Internet.

Now is this a superior rationale or a dogmatic one?

Oddballs aside, I find that, more and more frequently, people are horribly dogmatic in their political beliefs regardless of orientation. Granted I am in college, so most of the people with enough free time to complain are the people with angry and/or hippy signs on campus who have put their political beliefs above their education.

I've been wondering if anyone here had ever acknowledged this distinction between "superiority of beliefs" and "dogmatism" until I read this article.

People do often shun others who believe opposite of their opinions - especially by how "extreme" these opinions are in comparison. But I'm fine with many of these people debating contrasting opinions, as long as each side acknowledges one another's opinions - and challenges them carefully and with evidence. After all, that's what good debates are for - to resolve conflicts of ideas in the minds of people, right?

However, the ones that I'm incredibly facinated about are ones who don't ever budge their extreme position at all. Those are the fundementalists, the WBC's of the world. Look at the way they address the media. How do you actually "debate" these people? I'll bet there's no way you can - since they literally deflect all arguments that hit them, rather than questioning and acknowledging the opposition carefully. That, I say, is dogmatism - the worser thing to have than "superior beliefs".

Social Judgement Theory Is a great way to view this: believing in "superiority" of your beliefs doesn't presicely measure your tolerance or openess to other beliefs. Having dogmatism does - it's quite low.

Considering the shift on the right from neo-con to libertarian(A very good change in my opinion), I tend to think that the conservatives have been changing more lately than the democrat side. I'm not saying that they can't be dogmatic with some things, but clearly this study doesn't tell the whole story. http://bastiat.mises.org/2012/11/from-n ... -his-life/ Tom woods is a great example of this, per the link where he speaks about it. And if you poll young voters, we have WAY more libertarians among the young than we used to.

The conservatives haven't really changed much in the last 30 years. The Republican party has changed because its bleeding its moderates out to being independent. Also I think young people have always been more libertarian there just wasn't a good word for it till recently. Then those young people grow up and realize a quasi-anarchy isn't the right way to run society.

Liberals tend to shift opinions when new evidence warrants a reexamination of their belief structure.

Perhaps one could say that the liberal idea of being "open to change" or "willing to listen to others" is actually dogmatic. It's not an absence of dogma; it's a meta-dogma.

Another thing about conservatives is that they are so full of nonsense you can smell it in their breath even when they post on the Internet.

Excellent example of a Liberal argument: Petty insults with no substance or relation to the topic.

My personal experience is exactly the opposite. I started out as a liberal and was willing to have my mind changed to conservatism. (Although I think of it as being interested in smaller government and less government spending & regulation...not the overly simplistic definition in the article).

Most of the Liberals I know (friends and family) are extremely dogmatic and refuse to have their minds changed about any of their political views.

As a final thought, I've only met three types of people: Liberals who have stayed liberal, Conservatives who have stayed conservative, and Liberals who changed to Conservatives.

I've never met ANYONE who Started out conservative and became a Liberal....

Did you read the article, or simply look at the sample graphic I posted.

Yes, and I've taken that polarity quiz repeatedly. It's still an abstraction of reality. Like I said, more useful.

Originally you said "slightly" more useful.

Of course it's an abstraction of reality. Everything that isn't reality is an abstraction. But the state of political discourse these days isn't even that - it's a gross misrepresentation of reality. And it occurs in these forums in every. single. comment. thread. related to politics.

Extremists are always going to feel strongly about their beliefs - that's why we call them extremists. I think the dogmatic aspect for conservatives is the reason they're conservative - the "old ways" are the best regardless of new evidence or beliefs; stick with what you know. Liberals tend to shift opinions when new evidence warrants a reexamination of their belief structure.

I think you misunderstand the conservative position.

The main idea is that there is uncodified knowlege in existing systems. It is quite easy to lose it. Anybody who works in IT knows there are undocumented procedures nobody understands. It takes careful investigation to ferret out the underlying reasons. Sometimes those reasons are silly, sometimes the procedure is a workaround that should have a permanent fix instead. Whatever the reason you cannot just toss the procedure out blindly.

Most new ideas fail. That's OK. What the USA has is a way for people to try new things cheaply, without their failure affecting everybody else. Partly that's a function of our relative wealth. We can afford to bail out people who go bust. Part of it is that people have the freedom to try things on their own, without needing permission.

Of course it's an abstraction of reality. Everything that isn't reality is an abstraction. But the state of political discourse these days isn't even that - it's a gross misrepresentation of reality. And it occurs in these forums in every. single. comment. thread. related to politics.

My point is you're trading off an inaccurate model for an inaccurate model and moving to multiple tribes isn't going to lead necessarily to the ideal solution versus two tribes. It doesn't rid us of tribalism.

This sums it up nicely. People make up their mind, assume that only they can be correct, then use that to feel superior to others. I honestly believe that is what causes most of the problems between Dems and Reps, the feeling of superiority breeds contempt for the "wrong" side.

Some issues are legitimately black and white. If you think you're right, then the other person is automatically wrong. If there are only two sides, how could you expect people to react any other way?

Where dogma comes in is in the inability to see a potential solution that eases problems. For example, people who think abortion is murder won't be convinced that less murder is acceptable. But if the goal were to reduce abortions rather than outlaw abortions, that's something that both sides could conceivably work toward.

You would think that.

But, weirdly, the people opposing access to abortion have a significant overlap with the people opposing comprehensive sex education (which correlates to a proven reduction in accidental pregnancy).

Next up can we have a study about why news article comments are often littered with rants about "lieberals" and "demoncrats", even on subjects completely divorced from politics? Those are always my favorite, it's a wonderful little shorthand for "my opinion is completely worthless and you can ignore me forever", except then you realize that these people vote and get depressed.

You can close your eyes and sing lalala but that doesn't make this inconvenient truth go away. You will need to do mean things to old and poor people and raising taxes will not fix this. ( it can help of course).

That's a nice strawman, since I specifically talked about the need for entitlement reform in my post. But thanks for playing.

ObamaCare at its heart is supposed to be about taking the first steps at full scale reform of our entire medical system to fix our costs, after all. Right now the alternative offered by the opposition is "dismantle it entirely." Which is insane.

Quote:

For the you only need to be able to service it argument: Look at Greece. Interest rates can change and suddenly your country is in ruins. You can of course always print more money but this will eventually lead to inflation or asset bubbles like 2007.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... e14763748/[/quite]Greece was still incurring new debt, which is the exact opposite of what I said.

Quote:

Normally there should be some common ground. ( Like not letting the country go broke) But Obama is the worst president ever in this regard.

Bullshit. When one party literally claims it is their job to say no to the opposition party under all circumstances, the common ground is erased before you can even find it. Republicans have continuously shifted position to get rid of it, lest they be seen as compromising by their base. You can blame the public for voting in the Tea Party, but blaming Obama beacuse he can't broker compromise is stupid, since the only definition of compromise we have today is "capitulate on everything."

(And yes the Teaparty idiots are even more insane, fix your goddamn gerrymandering laws already. That cannot be that hard can it? You would think you would get at least public support for that )

It's done at the state level and has full public support in those states where it's happening. A largely conservative state will wipe out Congressional districts that are liberal leaning against the will of the people who live there. All just to better their dying party at the national level. So no, it won't be fixed any time soon.

Of course we ALL know that ONLY conservatives do that sort of thing. Yup

My suggestions to stabilize voting districts is require boundaries that can't easily be tweaed. City or county borders, rivers etc. No jogging around city blocks.

Our debt isn't an unmanageable problem, for now... but when interest rates are eventually forced to raise by market forces our debt can quickly become unmanageable. If the fed wasn't buying 45Billion in treasuries a month then the rest of the world would have soaked them up but at significantly higher interest rates. And if the fed ever unwinds its current holdings then that will drive them up even further. And finally, if the fed never unwinds or even tapers we will just slowly inflate our currency's value away.

If interest rates ever got high enough to be a problem the Government could pay off the loans by printing money. You're forgetting that the US Government is the issuer of the currency and can do whatever it wants with it. The entire budget deficit is being paid for by loans that predominately go to US buyers. Its in lieu of taxing to pay for the shortfall. The money is there we just have a Government that chooses to borrow then tax the money it needs. Either way its getting the money from the people.

How long will the American people sit quietly while the government destroys their country from the inside out? Seems they get away with it because nobody cares what they do as long as they still see their paycheck.

How long will the American people sit quietly while the government destroys their country from the inside out? Seems they get away with it because nobody cares what they do as long as they still see their paycheck.

Do you have a billion or so to give me so I have the only Speech that matters? Don't be so smug.

It's called illusory superiority and has been known for quite some time. But it's useful to have biases pointed out repeatedly and by different sources since one of the corollaries of illusory superiority is that everyone thinks he/she is less biased than he/she really is.

My point is you're trading off an inaccurate model for an inaccurate model and moving to multiple tribes isn't going to lead necessarily to the ideal solution versus two tribes. It doesn't rid us of tribalism.

If you've read my previous (non-sarcastic) posts here, you'll find that I believe 'tribalism' (or an 'Us vs. Them' mindset) is a significant source of social problems, if not the most significant. So anything that can help us move past the Star-bellied Sneetches would be a good thing.

Unfortunately, the 'ideal solution' to this is deeply hindered by human nature and evolution, which has a formidable struggle against entropy to overcome. A perfectly homogenous society (akin to a 'hive') minimizes egos, but leads to pretty boring lives and little to no creativity. Wild heterogeneity, on the other hand, typically leads to conflict.

So somehow we have to acheive an acceptable balance, but that balance has to be honest, not something fabricated for the sake of political expediency. Meanwhile, reducing society down to cartoonish dipoles is a recipe for never rising above cartoonish dipoles. It's been going on generation after generation with no end in sight.

This seems contradictory to me. How can it be that very few people feel their opinions on voter ID laws are clearly superior and have conservatives strongly feel their beliefs on voter ID laws are superior?

It just so happens that conservatives (and others) are right about voter ID. Canada, a country so left it makes your head spin, requires ID in order to vote.

Now before anyone gets apoplectic with rage at the very idea of requiring ID to vote just think about it calmly. Is requiring ID for the most important act of a democracy really a bad thing? No, it is not.

If you feel that voter ID is harder for poor people or hobos then volunteer and get that hobo the ID they need. That is the correct response. Not this foolish insistence on no ID. Demanding no ID is dogmatic and crazy no matter what your ideology. Don't be the clown to the left of the centrist. No ID is for poor countries that use purple ink on a finger to show that you already voted.

So yeah, anyone that thinks voter ID is good rests their opinion on solid research about how other developed countries do it.

My point is you're trading off an inaccurate model for an inaccurate model and moving to multiple tribes isn't going to lead necessarily to the ideal solution versus two tribes. It doesn't rid us of tribalism.

If you've read my previous (non-sarcastic) posts here, you'll find that I believe 'tribalism' (or an 'Us vs. Them' mindset) is a significant source of social problems, if not the most significant. So anything that can help us move past the Star-bellied Sneetches would be a good thing.

My point is that you're suggesting the "solution" be the Sneeches, the Breeches, the Leeches, and the Deeches.

When all matters were summed up, however, a clear trend was true: as the title of the paper puts it, feeling superior is a bipartisan issue. "Respondents who insisted that they had the only possible correct view were split evenly in terms of whether they endorsed conservative or liberal viewpoints," the authors conclude.

This sums it up nicely. People make up their mind, assume that only they can be correct, then use that to feel superior to others. I honestly believe that is what causes most of the problems between Dems and Reps, the feeling of superiority breeds contempt for the "wrong" side.

This also causes most of the problems between Xbox and Play Station fans

When all matters were summed up, however, a clear trend was true: as the title of the paper puts it, feeling superior is a bipartisan issue. "Respondents who insisted that they had the only possible correct view were split evenly in terms of whether they endorsed conservative or liberal viewpoints," the authors conclude.

This sums it up nicely. People make up their mind, assume that only they can be correct, then use that to feel superior to others. I honestly believe that is what causes most of the problems between Dems and Reps, the feeling of superiority breeds contempt for the "wrong" side.

This also causes most of the problems between Xbox and Play Station fans

This seems contradictory to me. How can it be that very few people feel their opinions on voter ID laws are clearly superior and have conservatives strongly feel their beliefs on voter ID laws are superior?

It just so happens that conservatives (and others) are right about voter ID. Canada, a country so left it makes your head spin, requires ID in order to vote.

Now before anyone gets apoplectic with rage at the very idea of requiring ID to vote just think about it calmly. Is requiring ID for the most important act of a democracy really a bad thing? No, it is not.

If you feel that voter ID is harder for poor people or hobos then volunteer and get that hobo the ID they need. That is the correct response. Not this foolish insistence on no ID. Demanding no ID is dogmatic and crazy no matter what your ideology. Don't be the clown to the left of the centrist. No ID is for poor countries that use purple ink on a finger to show that you already voted.

So yeah, anyone that thinks voter ID is good rests their opinion on solid research about how other developed countries do it.

If we're talking voter reform, I'd rather make voting mandatory and Election Day moved to the weekend and add some provisions to protect workers who wish to vote during the working day. IMO.

My point is that you're suggesting the "solution" be the Sneeches, the Breeches, the Leeches, and the Deeches.

Fine. Remove categories and spread everything out onto an infinite-exis continuum. Then see how far the discussion goes before it bogs down into arguments over definitions and semantics.

The point of the political compass organization is to break free from a single-axis charicature to something that better reflects reality without become too unwieldy. No, it's not perfect, but it's a vast improvement in my opinion. If you have something better to offer I'm certainly open to it.

The problem, even beyond tribalism, is that we as humans categorize everything. It's in our DNA. What we do with this is up to any individual. But to understand the world, we separate it into "known" sets of characteristics.

Sometimes this is useful, especially in the sciences (social and otherwise), sometimes these differences are exacerbated and caricatured for ill.

My point is that you're suggesting the "solution" be the Sneeches, the Breeches, the Leeches, and the Deeches.

Fine. Remove categories and spread everything out onto an infinite-exis continuum. Then see how far the discussion goes before it bogs down into arguments over definitions and semantics.

The point of the political compass organization is to break free from a single-axis charicature to something that better reflects reality without become too unwieldy. No, it's not perfect, but it's a vast improvement in my opinion. If you have something better to offer I'm certainly open to it.

I'm not saying I have "anything better" so much as pointing out that it doesn't solve the problems of tribalism. It only fractures the tribes into subtribes.

As you mention in the first portion, you're lost without tribes. You can't define things on an individual level and are helpless to do so.

"They recruited over 500 US citizens through Amazon's Mechanical Turk"

I have to wonder whether this is in any way a representative sample... I don't know the demographics of the Mechanical Turk but I imagine they skew to a certain education level, income level, and level of comfort with technology, none of which are likely to be independent of political leanings or attitudes. On the other hand, it may be better than the norm of using college students, who also skew to a certain education level as well as age group.

This.

Looking for a normalized sample of the US population on Amazon Mech Turk is akin to running a computer proficiency polling on Ars Technica. The results will be heavily skewed.

It is almost like they already had a conclusion in mind when they created the "study".

You can close your eyes and sing lalala but that doesn't make this inconvenient truth go away. You will need to do mean things to old and poor people and raising taxes will not fix this. ( it can help of course).

The problem with this argument is the assumption that healthcare costs are going to grow at 4% for perpetuity, and that's simply not possible. In reality it would bankrupt the private sector long before it ever bankrupt the public sector.

The problem with this argument is the assumption that healthcare costs are going to grow at 4% for perpetuity, and that's simply not possible. In reality it would bankrupt the private sector long before it ever bankrupt the public sector.

And corporations would never ever kill their customers through willful neglect! That's never happened in the history of commerce. Ever.

My point is you're trading off an inaccurate model for an inaccurate model and moving to multiple tribes isn't going to lead necessarily to the ideal solution versus two tribes. It doesn't rid us of tribalism.

If you've read my previous (non-sarcastic) posts here, you'll find that I believe 'tribalism' (or an 'Us vs. Them' mindset) is a significant source of social problems, if not the most significant. So anything that can help us move past the Star-bellied Sneetches would be a good thing.

Unfortunately, the 'ideal solution' to this is deeply hindered by human nature and evolution, which has a formidable struggle against entropy to overcome. A perfectly homogenous society (akin to a 'hive') minimizes egos, but leads to pretty boring lives and little to no creativity. Wild heterogeneity, on the other hand, typically leads to conflict.

So somehow we have to acheive an acceptable balance, but that balance has to be honest, not something fabricated for the sake of political expediency. Meanwhile, reducing society down to cartoonish dipoles is a recipe for never rising above cartoonish dipoles. It's been going on generation after generation with no end in sight.

The USA used to deal with it by teaching everyone to be an American. We didn't have this cult of diversity. If you tell everybody they have to respect everybody's differences you mostly rub people's noses in them. We need to spend more time affirming our true basic principles, and I don't mean Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.

I would begin with:

1) Life2) Liberty, meaning a minimum of Mother-may-I.3) Equality before the law.